The sun is coming up outside, birds are singing up a storm and the bed smells of roses and peaches and all things good. By rights, we should have the most perfect day that ever was before us. But it won’t be. They never are now. All we have are these bubbles of bliss. When everything else can be pushed to the side and ignored. Never forgotten, just dismissed for the moment.

She sighs and shifts in my arms and then I’m staring into her bright blue eyes, so full of soft goodness, I forget all else but how good I have it with her.

“Are you thinking about Eden and the war?” she asks and it all comes flooding back.

“We’d know if she was dead,” she says and lays her head back down on my chest.

It’s what we’ve been telling ourselves for the past couple of weeks. Joker would rub it in our faces the second he killed her. I have no doubt about that.

“Alive and well are two very different things,” I say.

We all know this too, but we try not to talk about it much.

“She’s strong,” Ariel says. “If I survived three years of captivity, she will too. I’m sure of it, Nick.”

I don’t like her remembering the darkness that was her life for so long. But her words are words of hope. She would know. She’s also started calling me by my real name a lot, something no one’s done for almost a decade, and it has a special way of making me feel that everything is right with the world. That and having her near.

“I hope you’re right. But you’re the strongest person I know,” I tell her.

She holds me tighter and kisses my chest, right over my heart. She gave that back to me. As whole as it ever was. I spent years thinking I’d never feel anything good again and then there she was. She’s not just strong, she’s magical. And I need all of that magic to face another day of searching for Eden that I’m about to ride off to face.

But for now, we’re still in our new apartment, just off Main Street. We moved in two weeks ago and Ariel spends her days decorating it. I wish I had more time to help, but that’s coming too. The rest of the time she spends reading Eden’s favorite books. When she’s not begging me to take her with when I go searching for her.

I kiss the top of her head and then her lips as she offers them to me. Already the magic is working, chasing away the shadows, making the future look bright and happy and as good as it can be.

Her skin is softer than a thousand feathers as I lay over her and deepen our light-bringing kiss that’s better than any sunrise. I enter her slowly, making it last, because her moans are more beautiful than any birdsong I’ve ever heard.

She takes all of me, her hands caressing my back as I slide my cock in and out, her tongue playing with mine as we kiss. This is all I need, this wholeness, this softness, this pleasure. I wish it could last forever.

But my body takes over and my thrusts get faster, the kiss more urgent. Because I’ll always need more of her. For as long as I live, I’ll always need all of her and more. Just as she’ll always have all of me. She gives herself to me freely, offers me all of herself. I feel blessed to be the only man who can say that.

Her moans get louder, her nails digging into my back now as she nears her climax. I’m close too, but I want to make this perfectness last just a little longer.

We come together, the flood of magic enveloping us both. Nothing else matters right now. There is no bad in the world and there never will be.

That knowing lasts even after we’ve once again just lying in each other’s arms, our breathing mixing nicely with the birdsong outside.

“I was so broken and now I’m whole,” she says quietly. “I still can’t believe that happened.”

“I guess you just needed someone even more broken to show you the way,” I say and chuckle. “Because I could say the same thing. I’ve never felt more whole than I do with you.”

She raises her head and grins at me. “So, it’s safe to say that two wrongs can make a right?”

“An exception to the rule,” I say. “I guess if anyone’s gonna be that, it’s us.”

She laughs and kisses me again. And proves the truth of all that all over again.

We were broken and now we’re whole. And nothing will ever change that again. Because nothing can. Not as long as we’re together. Which we’re gonna be forever. And nothing’s gonna change that either.

THE END

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